Hey, all! Welcome back to The Beginning a fic that you could design a badfic bingo board on! It’s got almost everything: random capitalization, try hard names, a resident Sue, a potential Awesome McEvil, a generic horror-movie cast, lack of setting, amnesia, forced cliff-hangers, and much more! On the plus side, the chapters are short and the grammar/spelling is far from the worst I’ve ever encountered, so at least there are some building blocks in place.

Last time, stuff happened! I’m not sure I can get more specific than that, but I’ll try. One of Dr. Zomboss’s labs explodes, something named Catastrophe (yes, really) has a few angsty moments, a vampire flower named Vengeance (yes, really) sees the explosion, a search party is called to investigate, and a bunch of horror movie rejects bumble around the exploded remains of the lab for a while. During the bumbling, Vampy falls down a conveiniently placed hole and stumbles upon an electro pea who’s unconscious and suffering from amnesia. And that’s pretty much it.

Onwards to the second half!

The vampire flower and the electro pea continued walking down the hall in silence. Vengeance glanced over at the electro pea and was about to say something but the irritated look on his face made her stop.

Gripping.

Finally they reached the spot where Vengeance had fallen in. They could see tiny cracks of light coming from the very top of the hole.

So the hole was entirely occluded and dark previously, but they can see light now because plot.

Well, here’s the out way.” Vengeance said.

Cracks letting light in does not an out-way make. If the light is trickling in around 20 ton boulders, you aren’t going to get very far.

Unless of course you plan to pass some root clippings around the boulder and have your squad mates grow a new you.

“Now all we have to do is get up.” She walked around the hole looking for a way to climb up. “Come on!” she said “Help me!”

*Looks at the walls made of swirling mist*

Can’t really seem to find a handhold, but I think I might see a ham sandwich in there.

Hey, and there’s a bunny!

“Hey, wait!” the electro pea cried. “Do you hear that?”

“Huh?” the vampire flower said. “Do I hear- What?!” She could faintly hear peas, cries of ‘Brains’, screams of pain, and other sounds one might hear while listening to a bunch of living plants fighting an horde of zombies.

Sounds such as:

and:

Adam West Batman? Yeah, rather be watching that than reading this fic.

“Hurry!” she yelled. “I’ve got to get up there and help them!”

Hurry up and… what? You haven’t found a way up yet, and there’s no guarantee that there is one. I’m not sure how big this hole is, but it can’t take very long to search around it to know if there’s a way up right here.

“I’ll get us up!” yelled the electro pea as he threw a chili bean bomb onto the floor.

“ARE YOU CRAZY!” shrieked Vengeance. “YOU’LL BLOW BOTH OF US TO PIECES!”

Unfortunately, your plot armor won’t allow that to happen. But we can all dream.

“NEVER!” the electro pea yelled as he grabbed her hand and hyper jumped up, using the chili bean bomb’s explosion to boost them up even more. “Look!” he cried. “Get up there!”

Thanks, video game mechanics, the rocket jump was definitely something that needed to be in this fic.

Vengeance turned to see what he was looking at but before she could the electro pea had flung her up toward the hole’s exit.

Because you definitely have time for that while hurtling through the air.

She noticed a tunnel in the wall and tried to grab it but missed and started falling back down. She squeezed her eyes shut and prepared to hit the ground but instead felt someone grab her arm. She looked and saw that the electro pea had rooted himself on the wall and had caught her just a little below the tunnel.

*Raises his hand at the back of the class*

If the electro pea could do that, why didn’t he just walk up the wall?

“You were supposed to pull yourself into the tunnel.” he said. “Now get in there and help me up.”

Duh! Wasn’t it obvious you were supposed to do that when he threw the bomb at you? Jeez, talk about dense!

I mean, yeah, Vampy is dense, but not for this reason.

Vengeance climbed out of the tunnel and saw the plants struggling to hold out against a huge group of zombies. They had stayed there hoping that she would be able to climb out.

I guess that means that whole “trying to find her” plan involving digging and employing drones didn’t happen. Or, more likely, the author forgot about it.

She immediately attached a heal beam to an injured rose and began shooting at an imp’s z-mech.

Man, this scene is so good! It’s like I’m really there! See, there’s a rose, and over there, a z-mech! And there are things happening with zombies and plants!

The plants saw that she had escaped and started to run back towards the lawn. Vengeance started after them but realized that one of her roots was stuck under a piece of cement. She looked up and saw the zombies ambling toward her. They knew that she was trapped and couldn’t escape.

Suddenly (and likely from behind) more Hollywood inspired manufactured tension! If only there was a romantic interest to save her!

A foot soldier who was obviously the leader walked up to her and pointed his gun right at her face.

But first, we need some mustache twirling so that there is some illusion of having stakes.

“We weren’t able to find the weed we came here for so we’ll just take you instead.”

*Squints*

Dat ‘stache!

He was about to pull the trigger when an electrified pea came flying and knocked the gun out of his hand.

Apparently zombies take prisoners by shooting them. Well, I suppose if I’m fair, zombies aren’t usually the brightest bunch.

Also, totally-not-the-romantic-interest showed up just in time. So surprised. Much shock.

The electro pea hypered past and grabbed the gun.

I’m pretty sure you can’t conjugate adverbs like that.

He was deathly pale and was shaking as sweat poured down his face.

All right, everyone clear out, Electro here has to poop.

The vampire flower gasped as he pointed the gun at his own head. His voice trembled as he said “I-If you t-touch her then I’ll p-p-pull the t-trigger.” The vampire flower watched in amazement as all the zombies slowly lowered their guns.

And now the fic has reminded me of Blazing Saddles. Why are there so many better things than this fic!?

Also, for a dude who doesn’t know who he is, he certainly seems to understand that the zombies want him alive.

The electro pea gulped and steadied his voice. “Now go and free her.” The foot soldier bent over and pushed away the chunks of cement that held Vengeance captive, all the while staring at the electro pea. “Now g-go.” he stammered. “Leave now.” The zombies all silently walked away and vanished into the forest.

Of course the zombies don’t try to call his bluff or take him by surprise or anything. The anti-climax is palpable!

The electro pea shuddered and dropped the gun. He slumped onto the ground and rubbed his head, tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry” He whispered.

Don’t make me whip out the Crawling video.

“Sorry for what?” the vampire flower asked. “You saved my life.”

“B-But they only came here looking for me.” he sobbed. “They tried to hurt you b-because of me.”

So, were you lying about the amnesia or does it sorta come and go? Or did the author forget she wrote you with amnesia?

Vengeance was about to respond when she heard someone yell her name. She turned and saw Misty and Spy emerge from the trees. “I’m over here!” she yelled.

They didn’t finish their retreat due to the “no Sue left behind” policy.

And the zombies stopped chasing them because… reasons. I’m sure it involved the Sue, so we’ll just go with that.

They hurried over. “Ooh, when we realized that you hadn’t escaped with us we were worried that the zombies had gotten you.” Misty said.

A fair worry, but I’m surprised anyone noticed what with the running for you lives from a horde of zombies. Or at least, the horde that was supposed to be following you.

…

The same horde you would have had to pass through since you emerged from the same forest the zombies just went into.

THIS IS WHY YOU NEED SOME FUCKING SETTING!

“But we ran to help you as fast as we could just to see that you had beaten all the zombies on your own.”

The lack of surprise in her voice is just the awareness of the Sue force showing through.

The vampire flower sighed and said. “I didn’t.” Spy and Misty looked confused and Vengeance continued. “I wasn’t able to vanquish any of the zombies.”

In fact, neither side seems to have accomplished anything at all.

Misty looked shocked and said “B-But then what happened to all the zombies?”

Vengeance pointed at the electro pea and said “He happened to all the zombies. I had gotten stuck and he was able to get them to free me and leave without hurting me by threatening to-” she lowered her voice to a whisper and told them what he did.

A scene the author found so shocking and edgy, she couldn’t even paraphrase it. Crawling video is on deck warming up.

Spy squeaked when she said this and Misty gasped and said “Um… I-I think we should get back to the group.”

Misty, you aren’t good for much, but I appreciate you glossing over the stupider parts of the plot and trying to get things back on track. Not sure where that track is going, but sometimes “away from here” is good enough.

She hurried ahead while Spy and Vengeance helped the electro pea walk back to the rest of the plants.

Who is apparently suddenly having trouble walking due to his injuries having a high degree of plot reactivity.

And that’s the end of chapter four, onwards to chapter five!

Also, I’m going to take the opportunity to praise the author on one thing: the lack of author’s notes. Sure, she had a bunch in the first chapter, but they’ve since vanished. Good on ya, Purp, have a redemption cookie.

*Taco loads a cookie into the Baked-Good Accelerator and aims it at the fic*

Chapter 5

I made up the exploding chomper. He looks like a normal chomper except he is black, has a fuse on the back of his head, and can explode. (obviously)

*Taco sighs, and puts down the BGA and removes the cookie*

So close, Purp. So fucking close. Three chapters note-free, and then you give us an authors note of information that should have been provided in the narrative. Even worse, you ended it with a patronizing parenthetical. Yay and stuff.

…

Patronizing Parentheticals is my a cappella band that only does covers of The Ink Spots.

The frost rose squinted through her binoculars.

Uh, you know you can focus those, right? If you have to squint through them, you’re binocularsing wrong.

“Do you see it yet?” the exploding chomper standing next to her asked.
She sighed. “For the tenth time, no. Now be quiet. I’m still trying to determine their odds of survival should TUCA attack.”

Uh, who is “their” and what the hell is TUCA? Was there some required reading for this fic?

This is as bad as Linux packages that don’t list their dependencies!

The exploding chomper sighed. “Can’t I have the binoculars now? You’ve had them for a long time.”
“No. You don’t even have eyes, and besides, its your fault that you left your binoculars at home.”

Oooh, this is supposed to be funny.

She was silent for a moment as she tried to get a better angle to view the lawn at the base of the hill they were on. “Hey, I hope you asked Swirls for permission to come with me.” She sighed when he didn’t respond.

AND WHO THE HELL IS SWIRLS!?

All this pretentious vagueness is made all the worse because we got an expositive author’s note on something that was obvious. We really could have used information about what the fuck is going on here! I mean, I’d rather get the information from the fic itself, but failing that at least give me something useful in the author’s note instead of something that anyone with two brains cells could have worked out.

“You know she hardly ever lets us do anything.” he grumbled. “You would’ve suck out too.”

*Swenia wheels the Portable Porno Music Synthesizer into the Riff Chamber and turns it on*

You know, I think it was actually less intrusive when they just took over the PA system.

“No I wouldn’t.” the frost rose replied. “Because I know that she’s just trying to keep an ENTIRE PLANT SPECIES from going EXTINCT!”

*Rubs his ear*

“Plant” isn’t a species. And why would Explody looking at a lawn endanger the lives of all the plants? The lawn is basically their home turf, he has to look at it a fair amount of the time, right?

Their argument was interrupted by a soft beep from the frost rose’s bag.

I deny and resent the implication that I might have placed a bomb in rose’s bag. I had Crunchy do it.

She reached in and pulled out a small walkie-talkie. A voice came through. “Agent Sweet, do you copy?”
“Loud and clear, Agent Swirls, and before you ask, yes, Agent Cracker is with me.”

Ooof, plants are really, really bad at code names.

Hold up, these guys all get code names, but why not Agent Pea? I mean, yeah, he’s called Spy, but not Agent Spy.

Right, I always forget that consistency is just that thing that OTHER authors do. You know, the good ones.

The voice laughed and said “You read my mind.” it changed its tone to a much more serious one. “Now bring him back here. I hope he knows that this is the seventh time this week that he sneaked out.”

If he’s sneaking out like this, it sounds like he’s bored and looking for something to do. If you’re embroiled in a war with the zombies that threatens your “species” very existence, it seems like you should have a lot more that needs to be done. So far as working on keeping the “species” from going extinct, having a bunch of your agents sitting around not doing anything is doing about as shitty a job as possible. If you’re really getting pushed to the brink, you should have more work than you have manpower to handle it.

But, then again, that would all lead to having tension, and we all know tension is the bane of the badfic.

“All right, we’ll be there shortly.” The frost rose smirked at the chomper and hung up.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

*GONG*

We are all quite fortunate that the exploding plant wasn’t the one who smirked.

As they walked away she said “I’d just like you to know, I think that ‘Agent Cracker’ is one of the weirdest names ever.”

Maybe one of the lamest, but nowhere near weirdest.

“I wouldn’t talk if I were you, Agent Sweet.” The exploding chomper grumbled.

Boring banter aside, he does have a point.

The scene breaks at this point and dumps us back over to Vampy-Sue. Imagine my delight.

“I’m trapped in this horrible fanfiction with an Sueish edgelord roommate and a bunch of idiots who don’t know how to pick good nicknames.”

Misty gulped and began to cry again. “You know the fire flower Carla?” Vengeance nodded. “Well, she said that I should stop studying to be a nurse because I would never be able to pass the healing tests.

Dude, you’re plants. What kinds of test could there be? Not to mention that the Mystic Flower is a special version of a sunflower, which is the healing class of PVZ: GW. If you want to talk about the most contrived, pointless plot you can think of, it’s a Mystic Flower being concerned that she can’t pass a “healing test.” That’s like wondering whether a mole could pass a digging exam.

I’m not saying you can’t write a good plot where somebody who is supposed to be good at something is really bad at it, in fact it’s a core trope of several very good pieces of literature, but it needs a shit-ton more build up than we have here. All we know about Misty is that she’s rather emotional and spooks easy, and that doesn’t have any relevance to her ability to heal.

Purp, before you try to introduce sub-plots, make sure you can introduce a main plot without screwing it up. Just saying.

She said I would be better off doing things that didn’t require skill, like fighting in the war,

*Swenia storms into the Riff Chamber*

“Are you fucking kidding me!?”

Out!

“But-”

OUT! And take that damn porn music contraption with you!

*Swenia wheels the PPMS out while grumbling angrily to herself*

so I agreed to go help investigate the ruined Zombie Labs.” She took a deep breath and continued. “But when the zombies attacked, I got scared and hid.”

That still doesn’t explain why the commander was stupid enough to let somebody as unfit for duty as you to go on a mission deep into enemy territory.

Actually, I guess him being stupid is the explanation.

Vengeance frowned and said “If you ask me, the war is way harder than hanging out in the hospital healing injured plants.

This is true. Even worse is trying to heal plants on the battlefield. If you’ve got a point, you might want to start making it.

The sunflowers there have to heal and fight at the same time.

As I said. Still waiting for that point to show up.

And honestly, Carla may say that she is the best nurse in the lawn, but I think you would be way better than her if you tried.”

You know, I just realized that Carla is the only person with a reasonably normal name. And she’s being built up as some kind of minor antagonist or bully. I have no idea what I’m supposed to read into that, but I find it odd nonetheless.

Misty sighed and said “But if I become better than her, she’ll hate me even more.”

And if your frienemy doesn’t like you, what do you have to live for?

Misty picked up a book and started reading while Vengeance started writing a letter to her parents who were both working in a hospital a few hours away.

But enough of that, time for reading!

They were silent until Vengeance said “Misty?”
“Hmm?”
“Carla was assigned to heal the electro pea, wasn’t she.”
Misty sighed. “Yep.”

I’m not sure there’s a cure for plot-dependent injuries. Well, aside from maybe changing the scene to one where he needs to be uninjured. Hey, maybe Carla is also a director!

Vengeance thought for a moment before asking “You remember what I told you he did when he saved my life?”
Misty frowned and said “How could I forget? That was the craziest thing I have ever heard any plant do.”

And yet it didn’t stop the author from writing it. I have no idea why authors take such pride in parading around how bad and illogical their plots are.

“Why did the zombies listen to him? Wouldn’t they be more worried that they wouldn’t be the ones that got to kill him? It seemed like they didn’t want him to die.”

They also didn’t seem too interesting in tracking where he went, or trying to subdue him. It’s like it doesn’t make any sense or something!

Misty grumbled “Why would I know? I wasn’t even there. Now please, lets think of something a little less depressing and confusing.”

It’s pretty bad when the characters are trying to avoid thinking about the plot as much as I am.

She went back to reading and Vengeance went back to her letter. Vengeance was about to finish her letter when the alarm went off.

*Taco looks at the DRD Alarm*

*Wasn’t me*

Huh, inexplicable.

She quickly put down her pen and said “Misty, promise you’ll try your hardest today. The plants you are assigned to heal should not be deprived of the best medical care possible because you are scared of Carla.”

In that case, shouldn’t you leave the healing to Carla?

And that’s the end of chapter five, onwards to the final chapter! Which, fortunately doesn’t have an author’s note.

So freaking close, Purp, so freaking close to earning that cookie.

Vengeance stood in shock for a moment when she saw the size of the horde of zombies approaching.

Purp, you used the correct form of horde. I applaud you since that’s something that I personally fuck up all the time.

Seriously, homophones are my bane.

There were so many that she couldn’t even see where they stopped. She jumped on top of the wall that separated the lawn from the zombies and started shooting them down. When she noticed that the plants near her were getting exhausted she planted a heal flower and used her heal beam.

Much action. So excitement. Wow.

After a while bosses started to approach.

Because that’s definitely a way you would reference something naturally. Totally not video game mechanics. Nope. No siree Bobo.

Vengeance turned her attention to a gargantuar that was trying to break down the wall. She didn’t notice the foot soldier on a housetop nearby lean forward.

Not… LEANING!?

Vengeance heard someone yell her name and looked up to see a ZPG zooming towards her. She didn’t have time to react.

Where’s your love interest now, Vampy!?

She squeezed her eyes shut and prepared for the worst but instead felt someone shove her out of the way. Then she heard it hit.

Oh fucking hell, I was kidding!

Vengeance opened her eyes to see that the peashooter that had saved her was already being taken to the hospital.

Oh, so it was just random redshirt peashooter #37. Carry on. Good thing he knocked her out of the way of that non-lethal high-explosive rocket, otherwise she might have gotten bruised. And we know how long THOSE take to recover from.

She turned and saw the same foot soldier that had led the attack when they had gone to investigate the zombie lab.

Wait, there was a zombie foot-soldier leading the previous battle? Is this the same Mustache Mctwirly from before? Purp, you need to establish shit before you dump it at us!

He seemed determined to kill her for real this time and started shooting at her.

It was then that he realized that bullets too slow!

She felt the same way toward him and returned fire.

If this ends in a cross-species romance, I’m gonna spank you, fic.

Though, luckily the fic is not long enough to really give that romance enough time to be established. Not that our author takes time to establish things before lobbing them at us.

Luckily the scene breaks before we see these two start making eyes at each other.

Misty rummaged through her drawers looking for the right bandage for the injured cactus she was assigned to.

So, there is a specific type of bandage for cactus? Even Uncle Google seems baffled by the idea that cactus needs a special kind of bandage.

She found it and was about to put it on when a voice interrupted her.

Good thing somebody interrupted her, she was about to put that bandage on herself.

“Are you sure you want to do it like that?” It came from a fire flower with an annoying smirk on her face. Carla.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

*GONG*

Aww, you were my favorite character before you decided to go all smirky. I guess I can hope that the disgusted cactus is still around to fill the favorite character position.

“Watch me and see how its supposed to be done.”

See, you put the bandage on the patient, and not on yourself.

“Oooooooooooh!”

Misty remembered what Vengeance had told her and was able to squeak out “N-No this way is b-better.”

“See, if I apply the bandage to my face you mfrml frmlfml.”

You’re right, definitely better!

Carla snickered. “Are you sure? Do you really think that I, the best nurse in the whole lawn, would be wrong about something like this?”

When you put it that way, it seems preeeeety unlikely. Not that there are a ton of ways to apply a bandage to a cactus, mind you.

Misty gulped and Carla prepared to fire another insult at her when the head sunflower approached. “Excuse me, Misty, but don’t you have better things to do than distract Carla here?”

Given Misty’s track record of uselessness… no, I don’t think she really does have anything better to do with herself.

Carla stuck out her tongue at Misty.

Ugh, you can feel the junior high dripping off this thing. I’m going to need a shower and everything.

The sunflower didn’t notice and turned to Carla. “And as for you…” She lowered her voice so Misty couldn’t hear.

“Meet me in my office in ten minutes. I desperately need to be pollinated.”

You shouldn’t underestimate the healing power of Misty wrapping a bandage around her head.

Misty frowned. She only had two patients.

And she’s still managing to be distracted with trivial infighting instead of treating them. Truly she is a credit to her caduceus.

But enough of that, the scene cuts back over to Vengeance, because that scene is so much more interesting.

You know, if I had to chose, I honestly don’t know which scene is less interesting.

“I did it.” Vengeance gasped.

She did the thing!

She would have liked to celebrate her defeat of this foot soldier but there was a war going on.

And being out of breath after taking down a single opponent is not a good sign of her overall combat ability.

She looked around and noticed how much the plant forces had shrunk.

I hate it when my opponents apply shrink rays in battle! Dirty cheaters!

The remaining plants were struggling to keep the zombies away. She hurried to heal a group of plants hiding behind some rocks then climbed back onto the wall.

Hold up, if I’m reading this right Vengy here just spent a significant chunk of time battling down a single zombie. But, as a sunflower variation, her main role is healing. So, instead of keeping her troops alive, she allowed her forces to be decimated so she could go after ONE target.

I’m trying to decide who here is worse at their job, Misty or Vengy.

A giga-gargantuar slammed itself against the wall, causing Vengeance to stumble and fall off the wall.

The Dues Ex Machina needs to show up soon, otherwise some tension might happen.

She looked up and realized that she had fallen outside of the lawn. The giga-gargantuar glared down at her.

Glaring!? The horror!

It raised its power pole to slam it onto the vampire flower on the ground but a firey spike came flying through the air, nailing the giga-gargantuar directly on the head.

There it is! Whew, I was worried, tension almost nearly happened.

A fire cactus wearing a black mask that looked like a shadow flower’s jumped down off the wall and landed on the giga-gargantuar’s head.

Thank you. That description without a frame of reference is very helpful. This is just like when I went to Fond du Lac for lunch.

The giant zombie roared and flung the fire cactus off. It smashed into the wall and slumped onto the floor.

Uh, dude, you had a seemingly quite effective ranged attack. What the hell was the point of jumping onto the thing’s face? Well, other than “AKSHUN AND DARMA!”

Vengeance heard an all-star shout something to the zombie army and almost all of them turned their attention to the fire cactus.

Why did the zombies look at Flamey when the dude shouted the thing? The hell is supposed to be going on in this scene!?

It jumped up to avoid the power pole and was bombarded by footballs, concrete, and other zombie bullets.

Good job drawing attention to the cactus, dude, you just got him pelted with all kinds of shit.

Vengeance tried to get closer to help but quickly jumped back and hid behind a bush when an electro brainz turned her way.

All right, author, I know you didn’t get this while writing your story so let me be clear: using the name of something is not the same as describing it for the audience. I know that you know what these things look like. I know what they look like. Anyone who’s played PVZ:GW knows what it looks like. The problem is, using just the name makes it look like a generic mental snapshot of the last time anyone played the game. It’s dull, lifeless, and completely uninteresting. The real hard skill you need to learn is how to describe something in an interesting way that the audience may already have an idea of what it looks like. This breaths life into the scene and gives you characters some depth beyond just being two words on the page.

She peeked out and saw that the fire cactus was trapped right in the middle of the zombie horde.

Not to mention he’s got a pile of random crap on top of him.

Vengeance knew that was bad. But the fire cactus did not seem worried at all about its predicament.

Probably because he’s been knocked insensate from all the stuff the zombies lobbed at him.

Instead it took a deep breath and its fire started to burn brighter. Soon it was entirely enveloped in a bright fire. Then it began to spin.

Oh. Ah. He’s all glowy and spinny now.

It whirled around until it seemed to become a tornado of fire. A fierce wind picked up that soon became so strong that it blew zombies into the tornado. The wind eventually was strong enough to even blow the giga-gargantuar into the tornado.

So, uh, if he could do this, why didn’t he open with this attack? Would have saved him from getting all those chunks of concrete lobbed on him. If it’s strong enough to be sucking up zombies like a giant flaming vacuum cleaner, it doesn’t seem like gathering the crowd first was really required.

Just when it seemed that the wind would start pulling in the plants, it died down.

It didn’t pull the plants in because wind is selective like that. Giant, hulking gargantaur? Easy! Sunflower? Nope, need special wind for that.

The tornado faded and the fire cactus stopped spinning. It shook its head to clear it then seemed to vanish.

He of course didn’t vanish, but was really standing right there with his arms over his head to create the illusion of vanishing.

Vengeance looked around and saw that every single zombie had been burned and the plants were staring at where the fire cactus had been in shock.

They politely ignored the fact that he was still plainly visible.

Finally a peashooter unlocked the door and let Vengeance back in. They silently went inside and left the night watch to the mushrooms.

And they all went to bed early satisfied that their foe was beaten! That never goes poorly.

Never.

Vengeance immediately took a shower and went straight to her room.

So, for a flower, is taking a shower like sitting down to dinner, or what?

I mean, I’m sure the real answer here is that Purp forgot that Vampy is supposed to be a flower and is making her do human things in the face of all reasonable logic, but it’s an interesting question for social, intelligent plant species. Does having a meal with their families mean going sun bathing and then getting rained on?

Yeah, yeah, I know that sentient plants are super unlikely to have a societal structure anything like what mammals would have. Enough of your logic, hypothetical voice of the patrons.

After a while Misty came in. The vampire flower rolled over on her bed to face Misty and said “You won’t believe what I saw tonight.”

Seeing as every other plant on the line saw it and are probably already flapping their leaves about it, I bet she will.

Misty smiled. “I already heard.”

And with that, the fic ends. It hasn’t seen an update in over six months, so hopefully the author has thought better of coming back and finishing it. I’ll say that a fic based on PVZ:GW isn’t a terrible idea in principle, but this thing is already an unsalvageable mess of clichés and Hollywood melodrama that it really requires a complete start from scratch to make anything of the concept.

Thanks for taking this little journey into Plants vs. Zombies canon with me, dear patrons! Join me next week as I do something completely different!

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78 Comments on “1822: The Beginning – TwoShot, Part Two”

Unless of course you plan to pass some root clippings around the boulder and have your squad mates grow a new you.

Shit, man, how do you think I manage to be in so many different places in the Library all at once? This, plus EVE-canon cloning technology, and I have so many different SCs running around that I forget I’m the original, sometimes!

I don’t know if that would work; Bifocals tweaked the respawners again, so now everyone is getting the good implants. There is still a twenty percent chance of the implants vibrating out of your skull, but they are Bluetooth-compatible and you do get free Wi-Fi.

It was supposed to be “deal with it,” so either I misremembered (highly probable, the last time I did any French practice was back in 2012), or it’s one of those things where the exact meaning of the words are meant to be taken in a different light.

Also, I actually never went into AP French – thanks to poor math grades, I wasn’t even able to get into French class until my Sophomore year, only made it to French II by Junior, and I homeschooled my Senior year and focused strictly on the “Three Rs” due to being in the process of moving to Modesto and just wanting an easy pass so that I could finally put my shitty high school career behind me.

“Huh?” the vampire flower said. “Do I hear- What?!” She could faintly hear peas, cries of ‘Brains’, screams of pain, and other sounds one might hear while listening to a bunch of living plants fighting an horde of zombies.

All right, author, I know you didn’t get this while writing your story so let me be clear: using the name of something is not the same as describing it for the audience. I know that you know what these things look like. I know what they look like. Anyone who’s played PVZ:GW knows what it looks like.

But if, like me, you’ve never played the game then you have absolutely no idea what’s going on and have to Google things constantly. This does not make for an enjoyable reading experience.

“Huh?” the vampire flower said. “Do I hear- What?!” She could faintly hear peas, cries of ‘Brains’, screams of pain, and other sounds one might hear while listening to a bunch of living plants fighting an horde of zombies.

Could it be that, perhaps, a bunch of living plants are fighting a horde of zombies?

The plants saw that she had escaped and started to run back towards the lawn. Vengeance started after them but realized that one of her roots was stuck under a piece of cement. She looked up and saw the zombies ambling toward her. They knew that she was trapped and couldn’t escape.

LAAAAAAAAME!

I was going to say something wittier than that, but it basically sums up my perspective on this turn of events.

“No. You don’t even have eyes, and besides, its your fault that you left your binoculars at home.”

Ah, this is funny, and thus shall induce laughter in me. Please wait, I feel the laughter coming on. Yep, definitely going to laugh at this funny thing. Just a moment now. I can feel it coming. Almost happening. Wait for it… Wait for it…

A beeping bomb may not be necessary, but it is all about maintaining only the highest of villainy standards.

Though experience has taught me to keep the beeping period relatively brief. Also, extra fun to couple the beeping with a count-down timer! Most of my bombs go off when the timer still has fifteen minutes on it.